20 Random Facts About Luna M Lovegood
by Thanfiction
Summary: Genius doesn't always stay between the lines. Part of the Daydverse 20 Random Facts series.


**1. Her mother was a perfectly average, respectable girl from Guildford.**  
Born Agnes Marie Mitchell to a perfectly average respectable wizarding family of four with a father who worked at the Ministry, she went to Hogwarts, where she got perfectly average respectable marks and a perfectly average respectable job as a hairdresser in Godric's Hollow and dated perfectly average respectable boys and cried herself to sleep for no reason she could name. Then she met Xenophilius Lovegood and was utterly horrified by everything about him for about a week. A year later, her name was Rayvyn Pathfinder, she was living in a commune in Peru learning to hand-dye alpaca wool, she did not wear shoes, she was so happy she sang when she walked to market, and her parents were very confused.

**2. She chose her own name.**  
Until she was seven years old, she was child, little one, beloved, but never a name or a nickname. That was for her to choose, and on the first full moon after her seventh birthday, she built an altar of cypress and begged the patronage of the goddess Artemis. She would be kin to the wild things, the animals and the gifts of nature, a healer in the ways of the old wise women, succor and protector to her sisters, belonging to no man. She took the name Luna, her favorite of the Goddess' names and the one that she felt tied her most to nature itself, and she reclaimed and reaffirmed it each time she entered a new phase of her life.

**3. Clothing has always been optional at home, reading has not.**  
In some ways, her childhood seemed incredibly permissive. Wear what you fancy, or nothing at all if it suits you. Sleep when you're tired. Eat what you're hungry for when you're hungry. But at the same time, the rule was to always ask when you're curious, and they would always hunt down the answer. She was expected to read at least three books a week, and several times a day, her parents would say "tell me something new, child," and she never knew if it would be enough to rattle off that Tlazolteotl was one of the few Goddesses to whom excrement was divine, or whether they would spend the next six hours discussing the concept of sin and the transference of guilt in assorted cultures.

**4. She watched her mother die.**  
They thought they had finally reverse engineered the Elixir of Life. It had been her grandfather's life's work passed down to become her parents' passion. They were sure that in this one formula lay the potential to cure all human ills, and they used themselves as the test subjects. At first, they seemed to be growing young, as smooth-skinned and hale as teenagers…but then in a matter of minutes, they fell through the years, past their original early 30s in the blink of an eye into middle age and beyond. Her father, bless every deity the little girl screamed out to, vomited it up somewhere in his 80s. Her mother was not so fortunate, and it was impossible to believe the withered, ancient shell they buried was the woman who had laughed with her over breakfast. From then on, she always saw youthful death so literally as a life gone too fast.

**5. She speaks 8 languages.**  
She really has very little memory of deliberately learning any of them, though she has sought out formal refinement of her grammar and vocabulary, as well as keeping her skills sharp with immersion travel whenever possible. They were learned from her parents and family friends, from records, from books upon poems upon songs, and they have opened the world to her in English and Latin, Arabic and Spanish, Hindi and Mandarin, French and Portuguese. She can also read Nordic runes and Egyptian hieroglyphs passably, though she doesn't count those as spoken languages, and she's working on gaining a familiarity with Mayan pictographs so that she can better support Rolf in his search for the Huay Chivo in the Yucatan.

**6. She sought Harry out in fourth year because she felt bad for him.**  
It wasn't just losing his parents or having to live in a closet under the stairs, it was that he seemed like a person with such beautiful capacity for wonder, with a life that by all accounts was doing its best to smother the beauty from everything. And that wasn't even starting on his friendship with Granger, who was the worst she'd ever met for seeing a sunset and making a comment on the percentage of air pollution and the hole in the ozone layer. After Voldemort returned, she knew that it was the beginning of a night for him that would be long, dark, and lonely, and she reached out her hand in the hope he could learn to see the stars.

**7. She met with Snape privately several times a month.**  
Oh, she had to hide that from the DA, absolutely, though she'd never actually told anyone, so it wasn't really a change. She'd been doing it since first year, when she'd approached him after class. _I think you're a mean-spirited, bitter, tragic man, but my father says you're the best in the world at what you do and I've seen how many awards you've won, and I want to know all the things I could only get from you._ He'd sent her away at first, but then in third year, she'd been told to stay after class. People were almost always willing to open up about their passions if you meant it about being interested, and the things he taught her are still some of the most valuable techniques she's ever learned.

**8. She is the only person to successfully argue Hagrid about a dangerous creature.**  
It was ridiculous, she agreed wholeheartedly, to demonize the poor little lindworm because it happened to be poisonous or carnivorous or not as romantically popular as its more common dragon cousins. It wasn't the beast's fault any more than Hagrid's bloodline - which she knew was, of course, the real issue at hand in the perhaps slightly pigheaded need to protect the reputationally downtrodden fauna of the world - was his. But at the same time, it wasn't really fair to subject the poor beastie, no matter how technically good its care, to the negative energies of so many people hating it. Things know when they're unwanted, and wouldn't it be better to send it somewhere to guard a burial mound where it would be fulfilling its true destiny rather than making it a pet and a spectacle? It was gone in two days.

**9. She knew who Neville belonged to.**  
When she first met him, she was certain he was a woman, or would realize it soon enough. Never had she encountered such a strong, ancient, intensely feminine magical energy in a boy, but it wasn't until she felt him with his plants that she began to figure it out. It wasn't his, it just ran _through _him. He was a carrier of some kind. She arranged for Neville to lunch with her father that they could better unravel the mystery, and he named it at once, almost quivering with excitement. A Green Man! A genuine, once in a thousand years consort of the Mother Goddess! Neville had given her the nod and the tight-lipped smile when she told him. Eight years later, he'd given her an apology.

**10. She adores ice cream.**  
The best way to make it is to pack two nested jars with snow and salt, pour cream and honey and candied orange peel and lavender flowers and cardamom into the center jar, wrap it in a blanket, and dance with her father (or Rolf and the babies now) around the living room and right when you collapse, flushed and gasping, is right when it's perfect. But there are plenty of other wonderful kinds, and one of the first things she does when she travels to a new place is seek out their twist on ice cream or something like it. Granitas, gelato, halo-halo, mochi, gola, granizado, frozen custard, shaved ice, snow cones, semifreddo, ais kacang, patbingsu, kulfi, booza, dondurma…she's yet to meet one she doesn't like, except Dairy Queen.

**11. Bellatrix never touched her soul.**  
From the time she first saw the Death Eaters at the Department of Ministries and saw Bellatrix perform the Cruciatus on Neville, she had been preparing herself for the possibility of being captured again. She practiced compartmentalized meditation and the building of a mental refuge, and when the cell door opened, she simply went away inside. That didn't make it easy, nor did it erase the fear, the loneliness, the sheer physical pain and exhaustion of torture and captivity. But it got her through, and it gave her the satisfaction of being able to look down on the cruel woman's empty husk after the battle and knowing that she had never been able to get any closer to Luna than such insignificant meat.

**12. She changed the Quibbler when she took it over.**  
Daddy had bent a bit towards the political, and while she completely understood that as a product of the world he'd grown up in, she was a little less…militant. She'd been sent to Hogwarts almost as a form of espionage, to find out what They were teaching kids, but in the process, she'd found out that They - or at least their children - weren't TRYING to oppress anyone or suppress anything. They were just really, really ignorant. So when Daddy died, the Quibbler became the Questioner, and although there are still articles about rampant dental issues in the Ministry and she does point out deceptive advertising, suppressed studies, and that that they have a very vested interest in their sponsorship deals with Butterbeer and other sugary snacks available in the internal concessions, she doesn't call it the Rotfang Conspiracy any more.

**13. She thought Rolf was a shrub.**  
It was a perfectly understandable mistake to make. Between the ghillie suit, the disillusionment charm, and the careful application of local river mud to mask his scent, it could hardly have been considered her fault when she climbed down from her perch over the Yangtze river to relieve herself. The discovery that it was a person wasn't nearly as shocking as that they had been tracking the same Zhenniao, or that the tall, broad-shouldered muddy shrub with the stunning blue eyes and golden-red beard was the same little Rolf she'd played with as a child when his grandfather and her father had been researching together.

**14. She is not married.**  
Marriage, in her opinion, is rather like Acid Pops. Fine for other people, but she can't stand it for herself. As far as she's concerned, it's a lot of ostentatious ritual attempting to gussy up a dehumanizing, misogynistic property transfer, so she and Rolf have simply chosen to be partners; to live together, work together, have children together. There were no contracts, no binding vows, no promises of monogamy. They wear various talismans and bits of jewelry because it reminds them of one another, or to wish the other well, but there is nothing that serves as a wedding ring, and they both know that they are simply together because they want to be. Because they make each other happy.

**15. She has published four books.**  
"Hats Off" is a critical examination of the sorting system and its effect on perpetrating classism, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and the status quo by establishing and delineating students on arbitrary designations with artificially inflated importance. There was also a guide for the enlightened student to establishing an ideal study space ("Wrackspurts, Whatsits, and Words"), an additional volume expanding her father's work on the history, mythology, and potential whereabouts of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, and "Something New Under the Sun," an account of her travels in Guatemala, where she had successfully discovered three new species of beetle, plus confirmed the existence of one previously believed wholly mythical.

**16. She sat the exams for a MAGI and refused it.**  
It was proving a point about the educational system, but she knew McGonagall would be on the board, and she genuinely respected her, so she made sure to contact her first and tell her what she was doing. She was 25 years old and had been studying in the field one way or another since childhood, and she took the full examination for a MAGI in Magical Creatures, just so that she could tell them that thank you very much, she didn't need their permission, their fee, and their piece of parchment to stamp some governmental seal of approval saying she knew what she already very clearly knew.

**17. Interactive clothing makes her happy.**  
She loves things that aren't just worn, they're experienced. Things that change the longer you wear them. Things that have stories. Things you make yourself or a friend made for you or weren't clothing until you made them so. Things that send messages depending on if you wear it tucked or untucked, twisted this way or with that layer out. Textures and layers and patterns she can trace with her fingertips. Beads and fringes and embroidery. Bangles and rings and necklaces. Wraps of all kinds. Things that lace up, tie together, have options and parts and are reversible. It's not uncommon for her to wear an outfit with dozens of pieces if you include the jewelry, and if she feels like wearing four belts or making a skirt entirely of scarves, she will.

**18. She has gotten certifications in things that matter to her.**  
While she thinks it's ridiculous to have a MAGI to publish a book or teach an academic subject (isn't your mastery of the data self-demonstrative?!) she wholly agrees that there should be some system of approval or certification by a Master when it comes to matters of trusting someone else with your health or body. So although she was ruthless in finding precisely teachers she respected and agreed with, she jumped happily through every hoop to become a certified doula, herbalist, and reiki-centric massage therapist, though she did ask the completely un-card-carrying Meg Smith to assist Luna's own doula when she had the twins. Sometimes balancing experience and credentials is even better than either alone.

**19. She has a blog.**  
It's on a free public platform, quite popular, run with a prepaid smartphone and a solar charger. She doesn't use her real name or the names of any of her friends, but she makes no secret that she is a real and practicing witch, and she delights in how close technology has come to letting her reclaim the old truth of the Wise Woman, the Witch in the Wood. So much of what she posts about is magic that needs no birthright beyond knowledge of the surrounding world, but she also corresponds with several young people coming to realize that they have what the Ministry would call "real" magic, and has traveled to visit more than one "Muggle" who needed her aide. She knows this violates the statute, and she doesn't care. It shouldn't, and if they're ever going to restore a healthy attitude of magic to the world, they can't keep locking it away.

**20. She knows where all the dead are.**  
It took her nine years to track them all down, but she finally did it, locating the last unmarked grave of a Loup-Garou - an unknown girl in her late teens - brought by Greyback as part of his cruel tribe. No one knew her name. Luna called her Otsana when she lay the bread and herbs and lit the candle at her final resting place. The Battle of Hogwarts had snapped the threads of 213 lives on the spindle of a single madman's whims, and she took time each year to visit each last resting place, to make an offering of thanks for her own life, to reflect on loss, to pray for peace.


End file.
